Sven Neumann wrote:
we are aware of the need and will turn to it as soon as 1.4 is out of the door. Until then, here's an idea that would probably help: What if we improve the file plug-ins that read file types that support higher color depths (like TIFF) in such a way that they allow to do simple adjustments before the data is propagated down to 8bit? I was thinking of something like the levels tool. Do you think it would be possible to perform a reasonable first color adjustment only by looking at a histogram? In that case it should relatively easy to add that functionality to some of the file plug-ins. Since this wouldn't need any support from the GIMP core (albeit perhaps some helper functions in libgimp and libgimpwidgets) this could happen for GIMP-1.4. What do you think?
My 10 cents. I think it is worth to look at this pages:
http://tme.szczecin.pl/~jacek/index1.html
They explain how to make good scans, step by step. You may see there, that gimp has some weak points like 8bits pre channel. It could be good solution to make good (working in 16 bits) plugin to read photoshop amp files (curves) and also good (working in 16 bits) color profiles plugin (to read *.icc files). Both don't need any visual preview, they are almost automatic tools. And they by all means should work in 16 bits beacuse they are applied to linear (ie RAW, not gamma corrected) files directy from scanner.
There is amp plugin (ugly, not working) and color management plugin (ugly, but working to some extent). Anyway such plugins would be very usefull not now but also in future versions of gimp.
Regards Piotr Legiecki
